Chapter 1 Cat Daddy
Calder
“What the actual fuck,” I state out loud, and my cat, Milkshake, lets out a high-pitched meow from where she sits on my naked
chest. I sit up, clutching her black-and-white fur to me for comfort as I use my free hand to scroll through my Tinder account.
“Have I been hacked?”
My eyes scan over the contents of my dating profile, knowing damn well I didn’t write a single word of this. Catch feelings with direct eye contact? I don’t catch feelings. I catch boners with a light breeze. I catch ladies’ attention with my tattoos and muscles.
Feelings? Fuck feelings!
“Can Tinder profiles get hacked?” I ask Milkshake who tips her head up to me and drags her sandpaper tongue over my beard.
“Who gives a fuck about someone’s dating life enough to mess with their profiles? There has to be way cooler things to hack.”
I quickly check my other hookup apps that I keep armed and ready at all times and see the same long-term relationship bullshit
spewing out of every one of them. Make some soup together? My God. This is the complete opposite of what I look for in these apps. I’m very clear about that. Who the hell did this?
I reread the penis-size line, and my eyes narrow. “Fucking Luke,” I growl and stand up from the sofa to stomp across the knotty pine flooring of my small cabin. I glance out the window that
faces uphill to see if his truck is here as I drop a soft kiss to my cat’s ear. “Someone’s gonna die today,” I coo in a saccharine
voice to my girl.
Without putting a shirt on, I throw the baby carrier on my chest and stuff Milkshake inside.
That was the only part of the hacked profile that was true, but dammit, little fuzz loves being outside.
And there’s way too much wildlife around here to let her run free.
So when my future sister-in-law, Trista, gave me a cat carrier to help Milkshake enjoy the great outdoors safely, that meant I turned into a big, tatted mountain man who wears a cat more often than not.
Come at me.
Fuzz gets to enjoy the fresh air and mountain scenery, and I get to sleep at night, not worrying she’s going to get eaten
by the coyotes that roam the dense forest surrounding us.
Milkshake secure, I storm out in the bristly early March temperatures, the cool air doing its best to cool down my fiery temper
as I make my way to Luke’s to tear him a new asshole, but an errant thought stops me in my tracks. I pivot to look downhill
at the cabin on the other side of my place. Maybe the Luke dick-size comparison on my profile was a diversion to get me off
my older brother Wyatt’s trail. I certainly have payback coming from Wyatt after posting a Help Wanted ad for him last year
at the local bar when he was looking for a baby mama.
But I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.
The fucker is probably tucked inside his architecturally obnoxious cabin cuddling his fiancée and their nearly three-month-old
daughter, Stevie, in front of his stone fireplace, watching the snow melt outside the window.
Gives me the ick.
My brother went from never wanting a wife so much that he was looking for a surrogate to have a baby for him to now preparing
to fly us all to Mexico so we can watch him marry his incubator-turned-fiancée in a couple of weeks.
It’s enough to make a guy puke.
Not that I dislike Trista. She’s cool, and I’m low-key obsessed with my niece that she gave birth to a few months ago. The two of them are fine additions to Fletcher Mountain along with the pick-and-mix assortment of farm animals that keep showing up in the red barn located down the drive.
But my two brothers and I made a pact nearly a decade ago: us three and this mountain. No one else.
Now we have a soon-to-be wife for Wyatt, a baby niece who has us all wrapped around her finger, eighteen random animals including
a horse with a tongue deformity, and probably a fucking partridge in a pear tree somewhere in that barn.
Wyatt is a sellout.
My eyes shift to movement in the distance, and I see Trista emerge from the Dutch doors of the barn. She has a baby carrier
strapped to her chest, and I decide to let Wyatt live for a few more minutes while I investigate.
Feeling Milkshake purr against my chest, I beeline straight to the barn, my boots crunching over melted snow as I intercept
Trista walking back up toward her and Wyatt’s cabin.
“What do you know?” I bark, my eyes narrowing on my brother’s woman.
Trista smiles as she glances down at my pussy. “I knew Milkshake would love that cat carrier, for one.”
I dig my calloused fingers into Milkshake’s cheek, and her purr quickens as she nuzzles into my chest. “This isn’t about my
cat, and you know it.”
Trista’s smile drops, and she hits me with a scolding look. “Calder, it’s barely nine in the morning. I had this feral little
animal on my tits four times last night. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
“My dating profiles have all been fucked with, and I want to know who did it. My guess is your soon-to-be husband.”
“What does it say?” she asks, her eyes narrowing curiously.
I pull my phone out of my pocket to show her the proof, and her face lights up as laughter bubbles out of her. “This definitely
looks like payback from Wyatt.”
“That’s what I thought,” I grind out as I turn toward my brother’s house. He must pay for his crime. “Sorry, Stevie. Your dad is going to be out of commission for a while.”
“Although you know who else it could have been...” Trista’s voice stops me in my tracks, and I turn on my heel with a frown
as she adds, “Your niece.”
“Stevie’s too damn young to be on Tinder,” I exclaim, my eyes dropping down to the mound of chestnut curls sticking out from
her little stocking cap. Her hair is wild and unruly just like Trista’s.
“Not this niece, you moron,” Trista bites back a bit too comfortably. She’s definitely not the type of sister-in-law you can
fuck with. She puts me and my brother Luke in our place whenever the mood strikes her. I kind of love that about her.
She pats her daughter’s back and adds, “I’m talking about Everly.”
My brows furrow. “Everly is at college in Ireland.”
“They have the internet there, Calder.”
My mind races with this new possibility I hadn’t considered. How did my nineteen-year-old niece hack my dating profiles? In
fairness, my password might be easy to guess. Milkshake1234 isn’t exactly a high-security option. And Everly was the one with the idea to do the baby mama Help Wanted ad for Wyatt last
year when he was looking for a surrogate. I just helped her jazz it up a bit.
I shake my head and refocus. “But why would she sabotage my dating profiles?”
“Maybe she wants you to find a nice girl to bring to the wedding, not some rando from Tinder? I mean... we all have to hang with whoever you and Luke bring
to this villa we’re staying at in Mexico. Not to mention Stevie will be there, your mother, and your eight-year-old nephew,
Ethan. A random Tinder hookup doesn’t sound super family-friendly.”
“Trust me, whoever I find won’t be there for the family vibes.” I waggle my brows suggestively.
Trista rolls her eyes and rubs Stevie’s bottom. “Can you not speak that way in front of my daughter, please?”
“My daughter doesn’t mind one bit.” I match Trista’s protective stance with my own fur baby. I move closer to lean in and
whisper into my sleeping niece’s ear. “It’s best you learn young, lil Steve-meister, that your uncle Calder is a stallion.”
Trista groans and makes her way up toward their house. “Calder, I don’t know who messed with your profiles, but if you have
to go to Tinder to find someone to bring to our wedding, maybe you don’t really need to bring anyone at all.”
My eyes narrow on my retreating future sister-in-law. She might have a point about Tinder not being the right place for me
to find a date for a destination wedding. But she’s wrong about me not bringing a date. Luke already has his plus-one lined
up, and our oldest brother Max down in Boulder has been wifed up for years. Wyatt will be busy being a groom. If I don’t bring
a plus-one, that means I’ll be my mother’s date, and as much as I love my dear mother... I can’t stomach the idea of dancing
with her or my niece all night long. I need to find someone to bring with me on this damn trip.
I turn and gaze at the tiny mountain town that rests at the bottom of our long and winding gravel lane. Perhaps Tinder is
casting too wide a net. Maybe it’s time to look a bit closer to home. Jamestown ain’t much to look at. It’s a little hamlet
of Boulder—an isolated and somewhat dilapidated sanctuary for weirdos who want to stay weird. It’s full of loners. Trailblazers.
People who don’t want to be found and don’t mind a bit of inconvenience—be that limited grocery supplies, weather that snows
us in for a week, or cell service that goes in and out. Jamestown is our sanctuary. And it’s the place Wyatt, Luke, and I
have called home for over a decade now.
Unfortunately, the population doesn’t even hit three hundred souls, so the pickings are slim.
My brothers and I learned that quickly when we first moved out here.
Things ended real messy back then, and the three of us made a pact to not test the waters in Jamestown ever again.
.. but surely enough time has passed now.
I mean hell, Wyatt’s on his way to getting married anyways. Maybe it’s time to shop local again.